“What do you mean?”
“We showed her where…” Catchy stopped, and ducked down, looking at me to see if I got the hint. Having been a young girl once not so long ago, I did get it, and I ducked down to hear her whisper. “Where the presents are hidden.”
She grinned at me like she’d just told me the combination to the world’s biggest safe, and now we were all in on the big, dangerous secret. I blinked for a couple of seconds, not quite understanding why she was telling me this now, then the knowledge clicked in my brain.
Of course. “Hiding place.”
Then I looked at the girl, put my finger to my lips and said, “Shh, secret!” And followed Lucy into Sibyl and Gary’s bedroom, closing the door behind me.
The master suite was a lot like Sibyl - it looked so immaculate and well put together that if you didn’t know better, you’d think it would be hiding something. It was as if Sibyl was afraid that, at any moment an itinerant photographer might wander in and start taking pictures, and she wanted to leave no evidence that people actually lived in and used this bedroom. I couldn’t even bring myself to sit down on the bed, because that would mar the perfectly flat comforter and give tell-tale evidence that I had invaded the sanctum.
Lucy wasn’t as careful. She was in the walk-in closet, and was throwing things behind her as she dug through it. Scarfs, old jackets, and holiday socks had all managed to get in her way on the path to her destination, and they were strewn on the floor of the closet like they’d just lost a big fight.
“Kid, she’s gonna know you were in here,” I said, stage-whispering to her.
She said back, fully voicing it, “She’ll know when we come at her with the book and envelopes. The stuff she hid from both of us.”
“Wait, how did you hear about that?” I said, leaning into the closet. I heard some thumping and bumping in there as she shoved around inside a drawer.
“Because getting a group of people to smell tea doesn’t take all of my brainpower. Because I knew you were going to be gathering info to go on your own and I was going to listen in, which I did,” she said, her voice a little muffled.
Lucy was small, even for her age, and she was practically stuffed into the place in the closet where she was digging in at the moment. If it took her this long to get at anything, how the heck did Sibyl, who was about the size of the two of us put together, get in and out of it so easily?
I stepped into the closet to get a better look at what in the world she was doing, and immediately recognized the piece of furniture that she was rooting around in. It was a credenza, well made but probably a little too old and beaten up to make itself a home anywhere the public might see it in Sibyl’s domain. Once, it had been in Grand-Mere’s little cottage, a place where she would keep knick-knacks, loose papers… and secrets.
“The kids said there was a hidden drawer and that you could only open it from the inside, but I don’t see where that could even fit,” Lucy said, growling with frustration.
“Get out,” I said.
“Oh, you’re going to do better?”
Lucy pulled herself up and fell back, thumping against the back wall of the closet. She squeezed her eyes shut, and whispered to herself, Gary didn’t hear that. We’re still moving in secret. He didn’t hear.
“Watch and learn, padwan,” I said, then I tapped out a little rhythm on one of the gnarled oak sides of the credenza. It was a rhythm I had heard from Grand-Mere when she was looking something up, and needed her old book.
The one I’d let fall into the hands of a warlock, of all creatures. Push that down, that’s the problem we’ll solve next.
With a sound like stone grinding on stone, a drawer opened up in the side of the credenza that had not been there just seconds ago. In that hidden drawer, which got bigger the more you put in it (as I had discovered one afternoon when, for some reason only an 8-year-old Mimi could fathom, I decided I had to dump an enormous bag of flour inside of it, and it kept filling and filling) there was just a slim, small panel. It was not big enough to hold the magic book Sibyl had showed us both just last night. It was barely large enough to hold the envelopes that had come with the book which she had neglected to show us.
They sat there, looking like they had been through a paper shredder and somehow survived the treatment. I looked at them both, blinking at the oddness of their texture. It was a plain manila envelope, and a plain white letter envelope, both sealed. Neither opened. It wasn’t until I really felt them that I understood why.
I could feel the power throbbing through them. It was like… if you’ve ever just charged a cell phone to its full capacity, and felt the warmth of the battery, you know the feeling. But it was like I could feel the charged electrons, or whatever, of the battery pulsing through it. Sue me, I don’t really know how batteries work… but I do know magic. And this was powerful magic, moving in these simple little envelopes. Sealed in a way that Sibyl couldn’t open, with all her strength.
“Okay, so, what is all this stuff?” Lucy said.
“Step by step,” I said. “First, we get out of here. Second, how’s the thermos with the tea? Is it still steaming hot?”
“Uh… I’d have to open it to find out. Why?”
“Because I’m using tricks Sibyl wouldn’t think of to figure out what’s going on. And I’ve got to do it on the road, while we get to where she is. Assuming it’s not too late.”
“Okay. Fine. Where is that?”
“Why, the demon house, of course,” I said, with all the confidence in the world, pretending I wasn’t shaking with terror.
Chapter 25
We got past the moppets, past Gary, and into my car where I opened the passenger door, practically pulled Max out and said, “Drive, I’ve got things to do!”
Then I settled in to where I held up the envelopes above the open thermos, and hoped that my hunch was right. That hunch was that magic tea would basically do what I wanted, more than regular tea would. And what I wanted was that it would pour out steam, magic steam, in just the right amount that I needed to use an old trick to get envelopes open. It wasn’t anything I’d done, or seen done, except on some TV show, but I was sure it would work. Magic that can’t be countered with brute strength, like whatever had been done to seal these envelopes, by definition had to be dealt with by cleverness.
Well, steaming open envelopes was a regular, down-home bit of cleverness, and I needed it to work. I started on the small envelope first, which contained (best I could tell from feeling it) a small scrap of paper. The sort of thing a quickly written letter would be scrawled on. The thermos had kept the tea just as hot as I had needed it, and when I opened it, steam poured out like some sort of tiny dragon was inside there, breathing it out.
I held the envelope close, and tried to ignore the semi-constant glances I was getting from the driver’s seat, while Max pulled out onto the main street and headed back away from Sibyl’s house toward the middle, residential section of town. Finally, his curiosity got the better of him, and he started to ask all his unwelcome questions.
“Okay, what good is this supposed to do? We’re in a hurry, why don’t you just tear open the envelopes?”
“Because,” I said, focusing as if my will could make the steam any steamier, “these are sealed with magic, and that means it will take magic to get them open. I think.”
“You think? Shouldn’t you have a spell at the ready? Like, something you memorized this morning, that would disappear from your head after you said it?”
My turn to look at him, with complete incredulity. “What sense would that make? Spells disappearing from your head? That’s nuts.”
He muttered, not completely under his breath, “That’s how it works in Dungeons and Dragons.”
“Yeah? Well, this is real life. You don’t just… roll… a 30 sided die and cast fireballs and stuff here.”
“20-sided.”
“Nerd test, you failed,” Lucy said, laughing.
I gave her my this is no
laughing matter look, then I looked back at the envelopes.
“Okay, it looks like one of these is a personal note to Sibyl, and the other… it’s probably some documents.”
“How do you know?” Max said, glancing over at me. He stopped the car at a stop sign, and with nobody coming anywhere close to near us, turned his attention to me and away from the road. “Can you detect what’s inside of envelopes? Is that some kind of magic power you develop, like, innately?”
I looked back at him, and just shook my head. “One’s a little white envelope, the other is a manila envelope, and I can feel documents inside of it. See, this is what I’m always talking about. Coincidence, misdirection.”
“Always talking about?” he said, squinting. “With whom?”
Oh, yeah, that conversation was with Hank. I came to realize, rather suddenly, that other than customers at the tea shop, Max was kind of the only man in my life. He wasn’t the man in my life, but he was the XY chromosome pal I had. Talking to Hank had re-awakened a part of me I was keeping asleep, because there wasn’t a lot of use for it in my current circumstances.
And, at this exact moment, that little internal tiger needed to stay in her cage. Life was getting complicated enough without hugging, kissing, squeezing, and all other Journey song type stuff going on. We were on a mission, and it had to come first. Even if I was only half aware what exactly that mission was, myself.
“Can you open them?” Lucy said, leaning forward and cutting right through the tension that was starting to build, if only in my mind.
“One way to find out,” I said, looking at the steam-bathed envelopes. They drooped a little, like they had just spent a good afternoon in the sauna and were ready to get out. Without much ado, I flipped my finger into the corner of the white envelope, and it flapped open like limp spaghetti.
I looked back at Lucy with a smile, and said, “Open says me.”
“Yeah, yeah. What’s in it?”
“Keep driving,” I said to Max, who was looking over, too, and I reached into the envelope to see what the dead man had to say to my sister.
“Give me the other envelope,” Lucy said, and I did then I pulled out a single, hand-written sheet of paper. And blinked at the almost completely illegible writing that was scrawled across it.
“Um… okay, I’m having trouble… what does this say at the top? Scipio Rexus… mollus? No, there’s more letters than that… Hmm…”
“This one isn’t opening as easy,” Lucy said, yanking at the top flap of the envelope.
“Undo the metal clasp,” I said, keeping my eyes focused on the sheet of paper in my hands. “Uh… Okay. ‘Dearest Sibby, things I have kept from you for your own good are now coming out of my control.’ Sounds bad. ‘Secrets I am sworn to keep have come to be a danger to you, and your family. I am breaking an oath by bringing this to you, but I think it is the only way to ever be safe. Two former candidates for your calling have used secrets of the Malleus for their personal advantage.’”
“Malleus?” Max said.
“That secret double life of Sibyl’s that you don’t know about?” I said to him.
“Oh, right. That’s what they’re called?”
I neither confirmed, nor denied. “Let me continue. ‘I know you are through with the cause, but it is, unfortunately, not through with you. Fell powers have been consorting with witches and demons in your town, and I fear they see you as an obstacle to their power. For the sake of our long-gone friendship, I must break my promise to keep you out of our business. I must break my oath to keep our candidates secret, even from each other. I do all this bad, that I might do good. In the other envelope I have their identities, which will shock you, I know. And what you will need to do about them. In order to keep it safe I have hired out to a warlock to cast a protection on the envelope, so do not attempt to open it without repeating the word lock above…’ Oh, crap. Lucy!”
I reached back to grab the envelope just as Lucy finally yanked it open. With a sound like a cough, a puff of smoke shot out of the envelope, accompanied by a meager, unimpressive spark. Lucy blinked at that, then reached inside the envelope.
“Eww,” she said, withdrawing her hand. Just soot there, covering the tips of her fingers.
“Damn it,” I said, clenching my fists. My instinct was to give Lucy a motherly lecture about not waiting, about rushing ahead, about all kinds of things she didn’t do on purpose and that I would have done in her stead. So I just hung my head, let mean thoughts go through me without saying anything.
“I didn’t know,” she said, sounding near tears.
“I know. I know, we just…” I growled, whirled around as much as it was possible for me to do in my chair… and gulped when I saw right where Max had stopped the car.
For whatever reason, he had parked across the street from our destination, not out in front of it. Maybe it was instinct or jitters or… I don’t know. But it meant when I jerked around to look out my window, my gaze was leveled right on the front door of the awful demonic house.
It was supposed to be abandoned, but a light flickered in the front, curtained windows. Shadows moved behind the light, just as the trees moved in the breeze above the house. That enormous tree in front especially seemed to be almost dancing in the front lawn.
Against my better instincts, I looked up and down the street, and saw what I just did not need to know. As far as the rest of the street was concerned, this mild mid-winter day didn’t have a breeze. No leaves whipped across the street. No trees swayed. No grass bent. It was just at the demon house that the leaves and branches shifted in some demon wind, moving to let us know something was happening. Something waited inside.
“What’s happening?” Max said, though he wasn’t noticing the mephitic spectacle I was seeing, and had directed his question backward, to the distraught looking Lucy.
“You know how they have safes that will burn your documents if you don’t open them right?” she said, a hiccup in her voice.
“Mm-hmm. Oh, so, this is the magic version of that. Crap, that’s no good,” Max said, king of understatement. “What do you suppose was in it?”
I didn’t look at him or Lucy or anyone but at the evil house we were about to have to go in. Evil, because of what was living in it, and what was being done in it.
“I think we would have seen somebody’s picture in it,” I said. “Somebody we all knew. I think… yes, I’m sure we would have had some proof that Trish Tarkington was a slayer, or going to be a slayer, just like Sibyl. Something kept her out, and now she’s getting revenge.”
Chapter 26
Don’t ask me how I suddenly knew. It was just a combination of things all happening at once. The demon, Trish Tarkington coming out of the blue to pick my shop for her wedding. Her sudden dropping away from Max, like he’d described to me. And Hank just happening into the shop the other day when she was there.
I’d been thinking all of this time I shouldn’t mistake coincidence for intention. Well, going the other way was important, too - never think something happens by chance when someone could have planned it. And if they plan it and pretend they didn’t, that’s a good clue their intentions aren’t entirely on the up and up.
So… I had some idea what had happened, with about ten million gaps in it and no clue as to the real motives behind anybodies action. I was also convinced that Sibyl was in terrible danger, danger that was growing worse by the second, and that only Lucy and I could help.
I got out of the car, tugged down my jacket to keep it straight and to give my hands something to do, and walked toward the house. I kept my eyes on that oddly swaying tree. There were crows in the branches, crows that were taking off and landing back into the moving, swaying tree, cawing to each other in the night. Their noise, their movements, were eerie. Frightening. One of them flew off the top, wheeled and dove at the tree like it was attacking, then cut off at the last moment and wheeled away.
I was at the sidewalk before the car door behind me closed,
and Lucy was out walking several steps behind me. She was still holding the envelope with the burned out papers in one hand, and was cradling the thermos in the other arm, like she’d just grabbed everything nearby that might help with… whatever. “What’s the plan?” she called, in a low semi-whisper.
“We go in, things go our way, and we go home,” I said, with as much fake confidence as I could muster. “Pretty straightforward.”
“Oh, so, no plan whatsoever?” she said. “And have you even figured out who the bad guys are, or what anything whatsoever means or what we’re even doing here?”
Her voice grew in pitch with practically every word she said. I listened, as calmly as I could, and just answered honestly, with a shake of my head. And then I glanced over toward Trish’s house next door, and more pieces of the puzzles came together.
I remembered something from this morning, something important. Randall, and his blank confusion while being let in to my shop.
As if my thinking about him was a cue, the front door to the demon house burst open, and Randall came out at a quick clip. Lucy and Max had caught up with me by then, and they both stared at him like he was some kind of apparition. I didn’t think there was really anything strange about him, except for maybe his unusual determination to make it across the lawn of a house he did not own and confront people who were, if not friends, ostensibly friendly to him.
My mind was racing too fast for me to put words to it, but when I saw that big boutonniered suit coming at me, I did something which must have looked terrible but which in retrospect was completely understandable. I’m sure Lucy has forgiven me.
“Trust me,” I said to her, then I grabbed her and put her right in front of me, right in the path of the approaching oxen-like man. She shrieked, and Max shouted when Randall stormed right into the little girl, grabbed her wrists, and turned, dragging her to the house.
Never Date A Warlock (Sister Witchcraft Book 4) Page 20